Athens, Ga. – The University of Georgia recently signed a cooperative agreement with the University of Liverpool. The agreement will further deepen ongoing collaborations between the two universities by specifying joint research activities, faculty and staff exchanges and graduate student exchanges.
UGA Provost Pamela Whitten and Provost Steve Holloway from University of Liverpool signed the agreement in a brief ceremony May 6 in the Peabody Board Room in the Administration Building. Others in attendance were Kavita Pandit, associate provost for international education; Jane Gatewood, director of international partnerships; Robert Scott, associate vice president for research; Alan Dorsey, dean of the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences; and Noel Fallows, associate dean of the Franklin College.
“The UGA-Liverpool partnership has developed over the past several years into a high-bandwidth relationship spanning multiple departments and colleges, and the University of Liverpool has become a very trusted and valued partner,” Gatewood said. “It is certainly a model for successful transatlantic cooperation.”
The UGA Franklin-Morris International Scholars Program will host one scholar in residence during the summer 2014. Anna Bocking-Welch, a lecturer at the University of Liverpool, will teach a course on “Humanitarianism and the British Empire: A Complicated Relationship.”
And in 2014, UGA and the University of Liverpool will develop the One Health symposium as part of the International Festival of Business in Liverpool.
“The University of Liverpool sees this academic relationship with the University of Georgia as one of great importance; the agreement sets a paradigm for transatlantic partnerships,” said Holloway. “There are many individuals on both sides that have contributed much to the project but it would be delinquent of me not to mention, by name, Jane Gatewood and Bob Scott who over the past four years have shown a remarkable combination of patience and persistence. By virtue of all of the hard work done by both teams we can now offer our students a fantastic research opportunity and a career changing international experience.”
UGA and the University of Liverpool entered into a first general collaborative agreement in November 2009 to formalize a partnership in both the biological sciences and the humanities. Research correspondences with Liverpool exist in UGA’s departments including marine sciences, chemistry, infectious diseases and the Institute of Bioinformatics. In the humanities, collaborative research projects focus on African diasporas, migration and identities, and Iberian/Atlantic connections.
“The agreement between UGA and the University of Liverpool marks the culmination of significant effort across both the Offices of International Education and the vice president for research over the last few years,” said Scott. “The UGA-UL partnership is, in my opinion, the poster child of strategic high-bandwidth partnerships, involving faculty and student collaborative research and scholarship across many disciplines, from the humanities to bioinformatics. This agreement and the programs that will grow from it will encourage and facilitate even more collaborations to foster advances in research, scholarship, and education at both institutions.”
About the University of Liverpool
The University of Liverpool is a member of the Russell Group, an association of the top 20 major research-intensive universities of the United Kingdom. It has 27,000 students pursuing over 400 programs spanning 54 subject areas. The university is comprised of 35 departments and schools, which are organized into three faculties: health and life sciences, humanities and social sciences, and science and engineering.
About the Office of International Education
The Office of International Education supports the University of Georgia’s academic, research and outreach missions and strategic directions through the promotion of global learning experiences for our students, the sponsorship and support of international students, scholars, faculty and staff, and the development of international research and instructional partnerships and collaborations. For more information, see http://international.uga.edu/.
